40 years inside a woman - level 2

An 82 year-old woman came to a hospital in Colombia. Her belly was in pain. Doctors thought that she was suffering from an infection, but it was something else. Something unexpected and rare.

The doctors X-rayed the woman’s belly. The X-ray images showed a fetus. This fetus, however, stopped developing into a baby and has been inside the woman for unbelievable 40 years. It was the case of lithopedion or stone baby.

One in every 11,000 pregnancies develops into lithopedion. The women often don’t know what’s happened because the baby’s stone body is not infectious to the mother’s body.

The elderly woman has had to undergo surgery to have the fetus taken out.

Difficult words: X-ray (take a picture of the body’s insides with a special machine), fetus (baby before it is born).

You can read the original story and watch the video in the Level 3 section.

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